I have noticed that some people in Japan have been disappointed by their level of success in the most recent olympics held in China. However I have a feeling that Japan has done better than most people realize. To prove this point I argue that the number of medals a country earns is proportional to the number of people they have in their country, because it creates a greater chance for an athlete from that country to enter the olympics. In other words, the more people you have, the more competition, the better the athlete, the higher chance your country will win a medal in the olympics.

So for this experiment I have decided to make a list of the top 20 countries based on medal winnings. Bronze is worth 1 point, silver 2, and gold 3. We will add up a total medals-score and divide it by the current (rough) estimate of the country's population to get a medals per person ratio. Then we will compare the results. However I think it is worth noting that an athlete from a country with a significantly low population, say for example just 1,000 people (granted an extreme case) would have no one to compete against during training. So for that athlete to go to the olympics and receive a medal is, I believe, an even greater feat due to the incredibly high levels of self motivation and determination that athlete would have to possess in order to compete at such a level. It would be interesting to make some type of exponential function based on medals per person to determine which athlete "worked the hardest" but I can't even begin to consider what the shape of that function might look like and so I won't be doing that. Furthermore athletes train for a very long time, basically their entire lives and experiences would differ greatly, say for example the team's coach's father-in-law was stabbed to death just hours after the opening to the summer games, such is the case with the U.S. men's volleyball team, that would make focusing on your practice that much more difficult. Nevertheless that team went on to win a gold medal, some may argue that emotionally they 'worked harder' than some other team which didn't have to deal with such an emotional and unfortunate experience.

In any case here it is, the top 20 countries (based on medal count) broken down to include medals per person.

Country

Gold

Silver

Bronze

Population

Medals Score

Score / person

United States

36

38

36

301,139,947

220

1,368,818

China

51

21

28

1,321,851,888

223

5,927,587

Russia

23

21

28

141,377,752

139

1,017,106

Great Britain

19

13

15

60,776,238

98

620,166

Australia

14

15

17

20,434,176

89

229,597

Germany

16

10

15

82,400,996

83

992,783

France

7

19

17

*64,473,140

76

848,331

South Korea

13

10

8

49,044,790

67

732,012

Italy

8

10

10

58,147,733

54

1,076,810

Ukraine

7

5

15

46,299,862

46

1,006,519

Japan

9

6

10

127,433,494

49

2,600,684

Cuba

2

11

11

11,394,043

39

292,155

Belarus

4

5

10

9,724,723

32

303,898

Spain

5

10

3

40,448,191

38

1,064,426

Canada

3

9

6

33,390,141

33

1,011,822

Netherlands

7

5

4

16,570,613

25

662,825

Brazil

3

4

8

*187,543,000

25

7,501,720

Kenya

5

5

4

*34,707,817

29

1,196,821

Kazakhstan

2

4

7

15,284,929

21

727,854

Jamaica

6

3

2

2,780,132

26

106,928

Populations were acquired from google. <country> population.
Those values are based on this link. (cia.gov)
*These populations retreived from Wikipedia.

The table below is ordered by highest concentration of skilled atheletes.

Rank

Country

Score/Person

1

Jamaica

106,928

2

Australia

229,597

3

Cuba

292,155

4

Belarus

303,898

5

Great Britain

620,166

6

Netherlands

662,825

7

Kazakhstan

727,854

8

South Korea

732,012

9

France

848,331

10

Germany

992,783

11

Ukraine

1,006,519

12

Canada

1,011,822

13

Russia

1,017,106

14

Spain

1,064,426

15

Italy

1,076,810

16

Kenya

1,196,821

17

United States

1,368,818

18

Japan

2,600,684

19

China

5,927,587

20

Brazil

7,501,720

In conclusion we can see that Jamica, Australia and Cuba have way more atheletes in the general populace then Japan, China and Brazil. In fact on average people living in Brazil, China, Japan, U.S. and Kenya in general are really fucking bad at sports. Initially I had thought that viewing the olympics from this persepective would help Japan out, but it seems like people living in the most modern countries of the world happen to also contain the laziest, most uncoordinated and generally un-skilled citizens when it comes to sports. Perhaps we all spend too much time writing silly articles to make quarky comparisions between people we've never met and then discussing them with friends and family rather than participating in sports. Welp I guess it can't be helped, congratulations to all the athletes in their victories and cheers to Jamaica for having the most athletic country in the world.

On one last note, if Americans lived the lives of Jamaicans with their highly athletic life-styles, the U.S. would have won 1408 medals in this last olympics, that's a lot of gold.[Calculation: (America's Score per Person / Jamaica's Score per Person)* Number of Medals = 1,368,818/106,928 = 12.801*110 = 1408.

May 25th, 10:Travian Vis
Vis is better than
the game.
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December 15th, 09:Mario AI
One agile plumberGGJ - DYMYW
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November 30th, 09:Thanksgiving09
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